Environment

As part of the plan to begin phasing out gas and diesel car sales over the next three decades, drivers of diesel vehicles and older petrol cars in the UK will now face a tax called T-Charge for driving into the financial district and parts of west London, Reutersreported.

Drivers are already charged 11.50 pounds ($15) under a congestion charge. But those driving petrol and diesel vehicles typically before 2006 will now need to pay an additional 10 pounds ($13.19). That means if you have an older vehicle before 2006 or a diesel vehicle you will be paying a total of 21.50 pounds or ($28.19) just to get into the city.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan expressed that the new T-Charge taxation will help motorists to switch to a greener alternative and in turn save thousands of lives a year.

“The air is bad, but it’s also a killer,” Khan told Reuters. “There are children in London whose lungs are underdeveloped. There are adults who suffer a whole host of conditions caused by the poor quality air from asthma to dementia to suffering strokes.”

The tax will apply on up to 34,000 vehicles every month, a low percentage of the total number of vehicles that come into the area which is 535,000 according to the news publication.

This comes as California in the U.S. announced an outright ban on fossil fuel cars in hopes of reducing carbon emissions. Similar to China and France — all of which plan to phase out gas and diesel car sales over the next three decades as a part of the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

Britain has also announced that by the year 2040 all new petrol and diesel cars and vans will be banned from purchase by consumers. So the T-Charge tax is just a step towards pushing that agenda on its citizenry starting first in London. The tax is a part of a larger initiative known as the clean air plan which hopes to establish “clean air zones” (CAZ), The Guardianreported.

The government previously said that any taxation would be a last resort and they would look for local plans first.

“Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to public health in the UK and this government is determined to take strong action in the shortest time possible,” a government spokesman said.

“That is why we are providing councils with new funding to accelerate development of local plans, as part of an ambitious £3bn programme to clean up dirty air around our roads.”

A judge previously ruled the government’s original plans on tackling the issue, which included five CAZs, were illegal. The government was then asked to present a new draft policy to tackle air pollution from diesel traffic that new policy added a potential 27 CAZs. That means that the UK government is proposing taxation on 27 other areas within the country. The UK Treasury has also blocked plans to charge diesel cars to enter towns and cities overwhelmed with air pollution, citing concerns about the political impact of angering motorists.

A carbon tax in Europe was imposed in 2012 which charges airlines emissions fees for all flights that cross the continent.

The finalized version of the UK plans to curb carbon emissions is expected by 2018. Meanwhile, in the U.S. eleven companies are also planning to push for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, as a way of tackling the threat of climate change that “embodies the conservative principles of free markets and limited government,” Financial Timesreported.

It is worth noting that a global carbon tax was once seen as a conspiracy theory despite Exxon pushing it as early as 2009. One year later in 2010 UN documents were leaked to Fox News which showed the elite wanted to use global warming as “overpopulation” as a means of dismantling the middle classes while using “global redistribution of wealth.” All by using richer countries through carbon taxes and then using that money to bankroll the construction of a world government.

Then before the Paris Agreement, there were climate talks held in Copenhagen which third world countries walked out of after discovering that developed nations would take on less of a burden than anticipated with the CO2 tax while demanding more from poorer countries. It was also revealed by billionaire George Soros that the poor countries would have to take on “green loans” which would mean they would be in further debt with financial institutions like the IMF.

Seven years later and it looks like the plan is being carried out despite being denied and ridiculed as a “conspiracy theory.”

“The filters are the life blood of the plant. If you lose filtration, there’s nothing you can do,” said Drew Molly, the facility’s assistant director.

For the first time, Houston officials are revealing just how close they came to a potential drinking water crisis. Harvey flooded the northeast water purification plant last week. CBS News has learned the city’s drinking water system was hours away from failure. The machines that kept its water filters clean were themselves under water, reports CBS News’ Bianna Golodryga.

“At the peak of nervousness, were you more in the engineer mode, or in prayer mode?” Golodryga asked.

“I was in prayer mode. I was in survivor mode,” Molly said.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the plant shutting down would have been a huge blow to a city already in crisis.

“You can’t notify people to boil your water and tell them at the same time – but the water is safe,” Turner said. “That doesn’t work. … For the city of Houston and for our region, this plant simply could not fail.”

To buy more time for the filters, Molly and his team slashed how much clean water the plant was pumping out. Contractor Peck Boswell then brought aqua barriers and pumps to get all the floodwater out. Without them, Molly said they would have had to shut the plant down.

The plant is functioning normally again, helping to provide clean water to some 2.2 million customers. But not everyone in the Houston area gets drinking water from the city. Some like Leo Ramirez and Adriana Betancourt rely on private wells.

“I actually had somebody come out and drill the hole,” Ramirez said.

Their house was under three feet of flood water, a stew of countless toxins and pollutants. They allowed CBS News and the county health department to test their well water. Both results suggest the presence of fecal matter, with some form of E. coli and other bacteria.

“What does this tell you about going forward and rebuilding?” Golodryga asked.

Starting Tuesday, Harris County health officials will be setting up locations where residents who rely on well water can bring in samples to be tested. With chronic flooding and major storms now the reality in Houston, Mayor Turner is encouraging all residents to get their drinking water from the city.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Hurricane Irma, which has strengthened to a Category 5 storm packing winds of 175 mph, is expected to slam the Caribbean and possibly the U.S. mainland this week.

The increasingly menacing storm would continue churning west in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, and meteorologists say Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands could begin to see its wrath by the end of the day, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, the “dangerous major hurricane,” was about 300 miles east of the Leeward Islands, the National Hurricane Center said. It is packing maximum sustained winds of 175 mph as it heads west at 14 mph.

Landfall is expected early Wednesday on the island of Anguilla, the hurricane center said.

“The current track brings Irma to South Florida by Saturday,” News 6 meteorologist Troy Bridges said. “Computer models want to take Irma on that sharp turn north through the end of the weekend and beginning of next week.”

There’s a large area of high pressure, as well as a trough, helping to steer Irma to the north in the coming days.

While Irma’s exact path is still uncertain, several islands in the Caribbean as well as Florida are bracing for the storm.

After declaring a state of emergency all across Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said President Donald Trump had “offered the full resources of the federal government as Floridians prepare for Hurricane Irma.”

“In Florida, we always prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and while the exact path of Irma is not absolutely known at this time, we cannot afford to not be prepared,” Scott said in a statement.

Puerto Rico

Hundreds of people rushed to the stores, emptying shelves of food and drinking water just as the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard on Monday.

For hours, people also lined up outside hardware stores hoping to get plywood, batteries and power generators. If Irma knocks out power, Puerto Ricans said they are worried it would take weeks or months before the power is restored.

“It (power) is something absolutely necessary, especially due to Puerto Rico’s weather. We need to have the A/C or a fan on all night,” a woman told CNN affiliate WAPA.

Last month, the director of Puerto Rico’s power utility Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez, said several factors have made the island’s electric system “vulnerable and fragile,” WAPA reported.

One of those factors is the shortage of employees. Many workers recently retired or left their jobs for better prospects in the US mainland, Ramos Rodríguez said.

Public schools and officials at the University of Puerto Rico campuses have canceled classes, and many businesses remain closed.

Puerto Rico and a string of Caribbean islands are under hurricane warnings, including the British and US Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Martin/Sint Maarten and St. Barts, the hurricane center said.

The warnings are usually issued to areas that could see “tropical-storm-force winds” of up to 140 mph in about 36 hours after the alert goes into effect.

“Make a U-turn and die in the ocean, Irma. The Caribbean islands don’t need more problems!,” Twitter user mujertropical wrote about the storm.

‘Better safe than sorry’

By the weekend, it’s possible that Irma could start heading to the eastern coast of Florida and also farther up the East Coast, Javaheri said.

“Everyone wants to see this at least meander away from the United States. The strength, the positioning, the timing of that troughs coming in to the eastern coast line will dictate exactly where Irma ends up,” Javaheri said.

In Miami, supermarkets are already selling out on water and non-perishable food. People are trying to beat the rush in case Irma makes landfall in Florida.

“I’ve been through hurricanes and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s going to hit right here’ and then it hits 30, 40 miles up the coast and it kind of changes the way everything goes so, better safe than sorry,” Florida resident Greg Andrews told News 6 partner WPLG-TV in Miami.

OneBlood calls for donations

With the threat of Irma, OneBlood is calling for immediate donations ahead of the storm.

Irma is a classic “Cape Verde hurricane,” meaning it formed in the far eastern Atlantic, near the Cape Verde Islands (now known as the Cabo Verde Islands), before tracking all the way across the Atlantic, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller said.

And Cape Verde storms frequently become some of the largest and most intense hurricanes. Examples include Hurricane Hugo, Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Ivan.

The US is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Harvey, which has killed at least 45 people and caused flooding and destruction across Texas.

Now with the Atlantic hurricane season continuing, one projection has claimed there is a risk Hurricane Irma could make landfall in the US on September 10, causing devastation to the city as the storm continues to rage into the following day.

Some current projections show the storm landing as a category 3 hurricane, capable of ripping roofs from houses and causing huge waves and storm surges.

But as Hurricane Irma gains in strength there is no guarantee the storm will strike the continental US at all.

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Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew have issued a joint statement to mark the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, Bartholomew’s theological advisor on environmental issues, says the message comes at a time of global crisis and international instability.

The world that we share – the ground we tread, the air we breathe, the water we savor – unites us in a very tangible and profound way. Despite our diverse religious or racial differences, the earth provides a basis of solidarity and the ground of harmony for all people, all creatures, and all things.

It comes, then, as no surprise that the spiritual heads of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are able to profess with one mind and one voice the sacredness of God’s creation and to proclaim the need to respect and protect its resources for the benefit of all people, especially the vulnerable among us. Continue reading →

Meteorologists have been shocked at how rapidly Hurricane Irma has been strengthening, and they are already warning that if it hits the United States as a high level category 5 storm the devastation would be absolutely unprecedented. Of course we are already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and many experts are already telling us that the economic damage done by that storm will easily surpass any other disaster in all of U.S. history. But there is a very real possibility that Hurricane Irma could be even worse. According to the National Hurricane Center, at 5 PM on Friday Irma already had sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. But it is still very early, and as you will see below, next week it is expected to potentially develop into a category 5 storm with winds of 180 miles per hour or more.

I suppose that it is appropriate that such a powerful storm has a very powerful name. In old German, the name “Irma” actually means “war goddess”…

The name Irma is a German baby name. In German the meaning of the name Irma is: Universal, from the Old German ‘irmin’. War goddess.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew released a joint statement to mark the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on Sept. 1. They both say that they’re convinced there’s no sincere and enduring solution to the ongoing ecological crisis unless “the response is concerted and collective, unless the responsibility is shared and accountable, unless we give priority to solidarity and service.”

ROME – In a joint statement from Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew to mark the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on Sept. 1, the two said that what’s happening in the world today reveals a “morally decaying scenario, where our attitude and behavior towards creation obscures our calling as God’s co-operators.”

They call on those “in positions of social and economic, as well as political and cultural, responsibility to hear the cry of the earth, and to attend to the needs of the marginalized.”

Those leaders, Francis and Bartholomew write, are called to “respond to the plea” of millions, and support “the consensus of the world for the healing of our wounded creation.” Continue reading →

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The United Nations, often ridiculed as the dictators club, has just released lessons to help indoctrinate people around the world into accepting the UN’s so-called “Agenda 2030,” also known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. While the propaganda targets humanity as a whole, the UN acknowledges that it is specifically aimed at youth, described in the SDGs as “critical agents of change.”

The latest UN scheme to brainwash people into supporting its radical agenda for globalism, socialism, and technocracy is a free course dubbed “Introduction to the 2030 Agenda: A New Agenda for a Sustainable World.” According to promotional materials, it is “designed to improve general awareness about the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals for policy-makers and the general public, especially youth.”

The course, developed with public money by the UN “Institute for Training and Research” (UNITAR) and the “Global Goals Educator Task Force,” also created other materials aimed at spreading the UN’s totalitarian ideology of “sustainable development.” It includes modules dealing with the UN’s sanitized version of the origins of the SDGs, “a call for transformative action,” “policy integration and synergies,” the “leveraging of resources” (aka your money), and much more.

The UN has also developed propaganda materials and lesson plans to indoctrinate children as young as kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. “The Task Force is also developing a database of global educators who are responding to a call to action within education to meet the SDGs, and creating a database of open and accessible resources, lesson plans and global projects aligned with the SDGs,” according to Lynn Wagner, the Group Director of “SDG Knowledge” for the tax-funded “International Institute for Sustainable Development.”

Also being recommended is the development of a “comprehensive curriculum of high quality lessons/resources for students grades K-12,” the IISD said. It called for a “professional development program” to help brainwash teachers and educators so they can “bring the SDGs into their instruction” and brainwash their impressionable young students.

And finally, the UN System Staff College (UNSSC) is offering and promoting what is touted as “a foundational course on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” Other UN tentacles are developing and delivering “a series of activities, e-learning courses, face-to-face workshops, webinars, learning sessions/conferences etc.” “This Agenda will require all countries and stakeholders to work together to implement the global goals at national, regional and global levels,” it says.

A key goal of all the propaganda and indoctrination being pumped out by the UN under the guise of “education” is “mainstreaming” the Agenda 2030. That will presumably take some serious effort, though, considering the extreme ideology being promoted—an ideology completely at odds with liberty and Judeo-Christian values.

Far from being harmless, the UN Agenda 2030 being touted in these “courses” is essentially a road map to global socialism and technocracy. The mass-murdering Communist Chinese dictatorship boasts that it played a “crucial role” in developing the scheme, which top UN leaders have referred to as a “masterplan for humanity” and a “Declaration of Interdependence.” The plan calls for national and international wealth redistribution, government control over consumption and production, more centralized power at the global level, and more.

The UN brags that it is coming for your kids. In fact, in Agenda 2030, the UN specifically says that “all” children must learn not just to accept or tolerate this totalitarian ideology known as “sustainable development,” but to promote it. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate has not ratified Agenda 2030. It is time for policymakers in the United States to protect the American people from this insanity.

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I’ve covered the news in Houston for 3½ years and have already seen two devastating floods and now what is being described as a one-in-800-years flood brought on by Hurricane Harvey.

That suggests to me that something is happening here that’s way bigger than the largely made-up tiff between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D) about whether Houston should have been evacuated before Harvey dumped trillions of gallons of rain on the nation’s fourth-largest city.

There’s no denying Texas is politically polarized, with all its major cities liberal and Democratic, and the rest of the state, and all its statewide elected officials, conservative and Republican. So there’s no end of discord and rancor if one wants to find reasons for blame and finger-pointing.

Houston, meanwhile, can be its own worst enemy when it comes to flood control. A big part of its freewheeling, entrepreneurial identity is its lack of zoning, which has produced more than 600 square miles of subdivisions, strip malls and concrete prairie. It’s not hard to wonder whether this vast expanse of what was once coastal plain was really the best place to build a major city.

But anyone who has lived through four straight days of torrential rain that may surpass 50 inches knows perfectly well that no zoning code, infrastructure improvements or flood control regulations could have done anything to deal with this much water inundating a major metropolitan area this quickly.

And it is an unbelievable amount of water. Not wanting to risk my car on Sunday morning, I started toward our newsroom on foot and found myself waist-deep two blocks from my home.

On Monday I ventured a mile north to Buffalo Bayou, a bucolic urban park remade thanks to $25 million from a leading local philanthropist who once worked for Enron. The park was gone, its meandering bayou now a roiling, fast-moving river that had engulfed parkways on both sides, flooded a television station and badly damaged much of the city’s theater district.

On a stretch of Kirby Drive in River Oaks, Houston’s toniest neighborhood, the water was chest-deep, lapping up onto mansion lawns.

Sometimes, even in our political and governmental bureaucracies, people say exactly what they mean. Not known for hyperbole, the National Weather Servicetweeted after the first devastating day of rainfall, during which some parts of Houston got more than 25 inches: “All impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.”

“It’s catastrophic, unprecedented, epic,” said Patrick Blood, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “Whatever adjective you want to use.”

Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went even further: “This is a storm the United States has not seen yet.”

What they’re talking about, whether they know it or not, or care to acknowledge it or not, is global warming. The planet is getting warmer, ocean temperatures are rising, the polar ice caps are melting, and all of the incontrovertible science of climate change is that more extreme-weather events are an inevitable consequence.

Tom Friedman in his new book calls climate change a “black elephant” — a combination of the unforeseen “black swan” event with enormous consequences and the “elephant in the room” no one can see.

There’s really no other way to make sense of what’s happening in Houston. The black elephant is here in America, just as it’s in Africa and the Middle East and Antarctica, whether we want to see it or not.

Just acknowledging that will help Houston recover once the rain finally stops, making the political blame game even more futile than it has already become in American politics.

For now, Abbott and Turner are working tirelessly and cooperatively to help the thousands and thousands of people trapped by the worst floods in Houston’s history.

And whenever it’s over, Houston should use Harvey to jump-start its transition from the country’s epicenter for oil and gas to a world capital of alternative energies. If the city can turn this devastating tragedy into an existential moment of reinvention after the storm, then a decade from now we may argue that it was worth it.

As for the nation, Americans need to understand what leading scientists have concluded even if many of our political leaders pretend it’s not true — we’ve just about blown through the Holocene epoch, when Earth emerged from the last ice age and became more comfortable for human life. Some climatologists have started to call our current age the Anthropocene, in which conditions on the planet have been dramatically altered by man. We have to take responsibility for what we’ve done, and take charge of our future.

It’s clearly too late to stop the Category 4 hurricane that led to the millennial flooding in Houston. But it may not be too late to save the planet if we heed Harvey’s hard lesson here in Texas, a proud state that doesn’t like to be messed with. It could be the perfect place to start.